Over 12,000 kilometres away, it’s 10am in Los Angeles on a Sunday morning.
Tourists are parading the streets of Rodeo Drive, walking the Santa Monica Pier, playing in the volleyball nets at Venice Beach or taking a picture with the Hollywood sign.
But the locals are beginning to crowd pubs and diners ahead of Sunday NFL football, where they watch at least three games at once from 10am until 10pm.
At 5pm, they pack their bags, finish their last beer and begin to make their way into a cauldron of noise.
This is SoFi Stadium, and the National Football League’s Los Angeles Rams are hosting the Philadelphia Eagles.
Although this game is just past the season’s mid-way point, fans from across the country pour in their tens of thousands into their seats.
After the celebrations, cheerleaders, music and player intros, the stadium descends into a frenzy; noise cascades from the 500s when a third-down appears, and fans rise as their team edges closer to the touchdown line.
Jaymz Clements worked as a sports pundit in the US before moving to Melbourne and still remembers what a Sunday entailed.
“It’s an amazing cultural thing the NFL has over Americans. One of the coolest parts about living over there is that you just immerse yourself in these full-blown football Sundays, where you just have a million games from 1pm on the East Coast through to midnight,” said the 41-year-old, now working for Code Sports.
“It gives America a very, very, very strong sense of self because it’s a very American sport.
“If you look somewhere like Pittsburgh, everything is tied to the Steelers, and in Baltimore, for years and years and years, they are known for wire and the Ravens.”
I was lucky being a Patriots fan … it helped me fall in love with the game and understand the world’s a bit bigger than Australian sport.
However, the NFL has been expanding beyond American borders to countries such as England, Germany and Brazil in the last few seasons.
The NFL revealed in May that Australia was one of the countries they were looking to host a game at as early as 2026.
The sport, however, was only introduced onto Australian shores 40 years ago, where the first match was played on a disused rubbish tip, with no goal posts, kick-box protective headgear and no medical supervision.
For over a decade, Joshua Piantadosi has been a die-hard New England Patriots fan, travelling to Boston to see his family and watch games.
For him, it’s an exciting prospect even to have the possibility of an NFL team in Australia four decades after the game premiered here.
“I was lucky being a Patriots fan and saw a lot of success, and it helped me fall in love with the game and understand the world’s a bit bigger than Australian sport,” the 27-year-old from Adelaide said.
“For me, that would be nice to see the game that I went to the US as a kid.
“When I was over there, everyone would gather at my relative’s house, sit together, have food, and watch the games all day.
“I fell in love with it, and sharing that with people I love would be cool.”
Clements sees the advantages and disadvantages of bringing the game Down Under.
“What’s good for the league is making money. They’ve got 32 teams in the USA, and it’s tough to figure out how to continue making money from that supporter base beyond bumping up their TV money,” he said.
“When you play in Germany, the UK, or South America, you open yourself up for more new fans.
“If you look at London, the NFL keeps sending the Jacksonville Jaguars. So they’ve expanded Jacksonville, a historically small fan base, into new territories.
The Los Angeles Chargers inside SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Photo: Seb Tan.
“The NFL should play a game in Australia. But, the tricky part is always going to be the time difference. Europe works okay for American time, where you have a prime-time NFL game, which can be like Sunday Morning in America.
“They should try to have a preseason game over here at some point and then go from there with an actual game. I don’t know if it will happen in the next five years, but hopefully down the track.
“Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, which is around 50,000 capacity or so, you’d sell that out pretty easily. We’ve seen it sell out for a basketball game twice.”
Australia has already hosted an NFL preseason game 25 years ago.
Nicknamed the American Bowl, over 74,000 fans packed Stadium Australia to watch the Denver Broncos take on the San Diego Chargers.
However, according to The New York Times, many Australians were left bored at the pace of the game compared to the faster, more up-tempo sports such as NRL, AFL and soccer.
There are college pathways and recruiters in Australia looking for kids to join the NFL … the connection between education and gridiron is so strong.
Cherie McKay’s 15-year-old son, though, is not bored by the game.
When he first picked up a football at age 13 he didn’t think much would come of it, but six months later he was focusing on breaking into the US college system.
“I’ve seen my son go from being a kid who wouldn’t wear his formal uniform to school to choosing to wear his blazer and tie and up his grades,” McKay, 47, said of her son, now 15, who plays for Western Crusaders.
“There are college pathways and recruiters in Australia looking for kids to join the NFL.
“The connection between education and gridiron is so strong that he’s realised that if he’s good at this sport, he could potentially go overseas and get a great education.
“It motivates him. It’s on his wish list to watch a game live.”
Main image created by Central News using GenCraft AI.
